Product Description

For media-savvy Mac users and professionals working with libraries of images, video, music, and digital assets, the reinvented Office 2008 for Mac experience with Expression Media achieve simple life digital asset management.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #764 in Software
• Brand: Microsoft
• Model: FWA-00029
• Released on: 2008-01-15
• Platforms: Macintosh, Mac OS X
• Format: DVD-ROM
• Original language: English
• Dimensions: 1.57" h x 5.51" w x 7.48" l, .45 pounds

Features

• Streamlined user interface runs natively on both Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs
• Open XML file formats, the Office Art graphics engine, and other features that result in compatibility and file fidelity
• Drag-and-drop digital asset management, batch conversion and tagging, and built-in archiving and backup capabilities help you manage over 100,000 files and hundreds of format types across multiple storage devices
• Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office enables you to automate Office 2008 with more than 70 pre-defined actions built to simplify your work and extend your productivity
• Includes: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, Microsoft Server Exchange Support, Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office

Amazon.com
Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition. The power of the Office 2008 applications plus Expression Media, the powerful asset management tool to visually catalog, organize and present all of your digital assets. Simplify your work and visualize your success.

Simplify Your Work
Your presentation will make an impact. Your documents will be professional. Your analysis will be insightful. And Office 2008 will be there.
The latest version of the industry standard for productivity software on the Macintosh platform, Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac is more powerful and easier to use. Office 2008 combines Microsoft Word for Mac, Microsoft PowerPoint for Mac, Microsoft Excel for Mac, Microsoft Entourage for Mac, and Microsoft Messenger for Mac and lets you easily create high-impact documents and seamlessly share your ideas with others, whether they are on the Mac or Windows platform.

What's New in Office for Mac?

• Universal versions of the most popular productivity applications on the Macintosh platform (Universal applications run natively on Intel- and PowerPC-based Macs.)
• Microsoft Office for Mac natively supports the Open XML file formats for compatibility with Windows-based 2007 Microsoft Office products.
• A redesigned user interface and powerful new tools for simplifying work, creating great looking documents, and exchanging ideas and information with others.

Highlights of Office 2008 for Mac

• Office 2008 is a Universal Binary, was built by Mac users for Mac users, and includes many features which take advantage of underlying technologies of the Macintosh platform.
• Office 2008 uses Open XML file formats for compatibility with Windows-based 2007 Microsoft Office products. XML file formats help reduce the risk of lost information due to damaged or corrupted files and also result in smaller file sizes--up to 75 percent smaller than comparable binary documents. Office 2008 for Mac is backward-compatible with earlier file formats and users can continue to use the older .doc, .xls, and .ppt binary formats.
• Elements Gallery is the foundation of the new user interface, and gives easy access to the most commonly used tools and templates. With the new UI, you'll harness the capabilities of Office for Mac more easily than ever before.
• Office 2008 includes OfficeArt, the powerful graphics engine also used in the Windows-based Office 2007 products. You get great cross-platform file fidelity and easy access to stunning visual and graphic effects.
• Your words will make an impact with the modern styling of SmartArt graphics, which makes transforming text and bulleted lists into professional diagrams and graphics one-click easy.
• A new Themes capability simplifies the process of applying a consistent look and feel across documents. Easily apply a complete set of colors, fonts, and effects to your Office 2008 documents, and change them as easily as changing your mind.
• Automator Actions for Workflows in Microsoft Office enables you to automate Office 2008 with more than 70 pre-defined actions built to simplify your work and extend your productivity. (Available in Office 2008 for Mac and Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition.)

Entourage 2008, the hub of Office 2008, helps it to happen, one task at a time.

Enjoy powerful new tools, over 100 designer templates, rich themes, and an intuitive user interface in Word 2008.

Entourage 2008
Your e-mails will spark ideas, you'll schedule meetings where creativity abounds. Entourage 2008, the hub of Office 2008, helps it to happen, one task at a time.

• My Day keeps you connected to the action. Schedules, tasks, and priorities in one easy, standalone interface. Time will have no choice but to be well-managed.
• Use color-coded categories, status indicators, and flexible To-Do list management humble even the most hectic schedules.
• Office 2008 for Mac and Office 2008 Special Media Edition enable users to access their Microsoft Exchange server accounts with Entourage.
• Improved Junk E-Mail filtering capabilities and phishing protection tools help shield your inbox from the scourge of junk. Your inbox will breathe a sigh of relief.
• Projects submit to your superior management skills when you unleash the power of Project Center, With project details like e-mail messages, documents, schedules, and contacts in one convenient place, Project Center helps keep your information--and your stress--under control.

Word 2008
Powerful new tools, over 100 designer templates, rich themes, and an intuitive user interface in Word 2008 will help you to make your ideas look as good as they are.

• When you turn blah into brilliant, Publishing Layout View will elevate the way you think about Word 2008. This new specialized and customizable workspace lets users create incredibly rich documents such as newletters, flyers and brochures without a degree in design.
• Great looking document construction won't require a hard hat. New Templates, Themes, and Document Elements like cover pages and bibliographies make creating professional-looking output a snap.
• Your words will make an impact with the modern styling of SmartArt, which makes transforming text into high-quality graphics and diagrams as easy as one click.
• Dynamic Guides will help you keep all of your words and graphics in line and on point.
• Mass mailings will have a personal touch and Word 2008 Mail Merge Manager will guide you step by easy step.

Inspire your audience's imagination with compelling visuals and engaging layout in PowerPoint 2008.

Analyze, share, and manage your data, and easily create persuasive charts and thought-provoking graphs for powerful results with Excel 2008.

PowerPoint 2008
Your presentation is a story. PowerPoint 2008 will illustrate it. Inspire your audience's imagination with compelling visuals and engaging layout.

• Great ideas will get their graphic due with SmartArt graphics in PowerPoint 2008. Start with a blank slide or a bulleted list, and, with a click of a button, you'll have a stunning chart, table, map, or diagram.
• Designer Themes help you give your presentation a creative look, simply and quickly.
• The new Object Palette allows quick access to all your shapes, art, symbols, and pictures--including iPhoto files--in one easy-to-access space.
• Dynamic Guides will help you place and resize your graphic element to create professional-looking presentations in a snap.
• You'll lay out custom designs to showcase your unique content with custom layout capabilities in PowerPoint 2008.
• PowerPoint 2008 integration with Apple Remote Control lets you concentrate on your words, not your keyboard. Now control your presentation and engage your audience unleashed from the podium.

  Excel 2008
  It's a numbers game. With Excel 2008, analyze, share, and manage your data, and easily create persuasive charts and thought-provoking graphs for powerful results.

  • Ledger Sheets in Excel 2008 make tracking finances, inventories, even invoices and portfolios easy with preformulated spreadsheets and automatic calculations.
  • Charting improvements artfully convey the message your data is telling. You'll see your numbers in a whole new way.
  • The new prebuilt functions tackle the most common tasks and make creating error-free complex conditional formulas easier.
  • Quick access to formulas makes functions more functional with Formula Builder in Excel 2008.
  • Your data will know virtually no limits. Excel 2008 now supports over 16,000 columns and over 1 million rows.
  • Whether you're an Excel expert or a complete novice, Excel 2008 Formula AutoComplete simplifies your calculations by providing a dynamic pop-up menu so you can select and complete your formula.

  Messenger for Mac
  Convenience is the name of the game for Mac users who want to communicate instantly with family, friends and colleagues from one convenient place. Messenger for Mac is now a Universal application, and gives you more ways to share what's on your mind or on your plate.

  Use Messenger for Mac to instantly check the status of project team members, streamline workflow by sending documents directly from Word, or offer questions or comments on document changes instantly.

  • Yahoo! Interoperability will allow personal users to connect and message with Yahoo! Messenger for Mac users.
  • Your intentions will never again be in doubt when you create your own custom emoticons in Messenger for Mac.
  • Spelling Checker is now included in Messenger for Mac.
  • Let the world know your tastes when you display your iTunes selection with the new "What I'm listening to now" feature.

Customer Reviews

The long-awaited Intel Mac version of Office...
My installation of Office for Mac 2008 upgrade moved along smoothly. I was concerned at first about whether the installer would remove my previous version of Office (Office 2004), since there was no message displayed, but the prompt did come later. The installer did not remove my previous Office Open XML converter, however; and of course I needed to remove the old aliases in the Dock (which were now non-functional). The installer was kind enough to add new icons to the Dock, however.

The upgrade software found my previous version (Office 2004) promptly, and didn't hassle me with product activation, which I was glad for. It also stored duplicate fonts in a separate folder and told me where that folder was located, rather than just overwriting or deleting them - another politeness.

The printed "Install Guide" that was included with the package, however, was pretty well a waste of paper and a no-brainer, as it offered nothing above and beyond what the average user would already know; i.e. stick in the disc and follow the instructions. I was pleased, however, that Microsoft trimmed down the packaging - Office 2004 was shipped in a huge and bulky plastic bubble case, with a hard-shell plastic CD case inside of that, and all wrapped with more plastic, whereas Office 2008's more modest paperback-sized lightweight box shows more environmentally-friendly (and space-saving) thinking.

It goes without saying that a full install of Office 2008 for Mac does require 1.1GB of hard drive space and a DVD drive, as opposed to the 630MB/CD-ROM install requirements of Office 2004. (These MS apps are really packing on the pounds...)

As for Expression Media, which is an image and photo management app that is bundled with this upgrade set, the installer worked fine, but the app was not added to the Dock, and I had to find it myself in the Applications folder. Expression Media asked me to import my iPhoto library as an Expression Media catalog, but the photos were not imported and I heard several hundred Mac warning sounds (seriously) that indicated the operation was unsuccessful. Expression Media didn't seem to understand what was going on, and thought that the photos had been catalogued, which they were not. (Admittedly, not a good first impression.)

Upon opening the Project Gallery, I found that Office had forgotten my recently used Office files, unfortunately. I also had to manually change the default application that runs the new .docx, .xlsx, and .pptx formats as well. I suppose that this is a non-intrusive decision on the part of Microsoft, but it is a bit time-consuming to make the changes.

Running Office 2008 on a Mac mini (Intel Core Duo 2GhHz, 2GB of RAM) under OS X Tiger, I found that the overall performance of the Office apps are noticeably faster than Office 2004, which ran under Rosetta on Intel Macs. Startup time for each Office 2008 app is very good, and response times are generally snappy. The font menu, for instance, used to take considerable time to display all of the dozens and dozens of fonts I have installed, but Office 2008 now fairly well breezes through them.

The compatibility checker, which verifies and addresses possible problems in using PowerPoint presentations across the various PowerPoint platforms (Mac and Windows) and versions (97-2008), is thorough, if not time-consuming.

As Office is such a detailed program, and there are so many people from all walks of life who use its individual applications, it's hard to say in one go what the possible benefits and disadvantages of moving up to Office 2008 for Mac would be. The "My Day" floating calendar and task management tool, for instance, might be useful for people who want a PDA-like approach to desktop time management. I upgraded to Office 2008 this time because (1) the cost was inexpensive, and (2) I was getting tired of using the Office Open XML converter each time I wanted to open an Office 2007 for Windows file in Office 2004. However, for the user who just needs to create a few bread-and-butter documents, bang out some basic spreadsheets, or draw up a simple product or school presentation to show to an audience, there may not be a compelling reason to move up to Office 2008. In short: if you're happy with what you have, then why change it? (And why would you be here, if you weren't thinking of upgrading? ;-) )

This having been said, I can see that Microsoft's Mac BU has been hard at work on this, and it was about time for an upgrade. (I would recommend also checking out special offers for this upgrade product on the Mactopia site as well.) As for Expression Media, however, if you already use Adobe Bridge or iPhoto, you may not find much added value in Microsoft's Expression Media, although concept-wise they do differ, and Expression Media clearly has some strong points (the ability to catalog and preview media without actually moving it into a library, for instance).

All said, it's safe to say that Microsoft Office 2008 is a product to grow on.

Upgrading Office on an old iMac + Expression Media comments
I installed Office 2008 on a 1.25GHz G4 iMac with System 10.4.11 . Since other reviewers have discussed the features and functionality of Office 2008 thoroughly, I am going to focus my review on the experience of upgrading from Office v.X to Office 2008. I'll also comment on Expression Media because it's what sets the Mac Office Special Media Edition apart from the other versions of Mac Office.


Background:
*I have experience with several versions of Mac Office, beginning with version 4.2 . I also have used Office 98, Office 2001, and as mentioned above, Office v.X before upgrading to Office 2008.

*The way I use Office has changed over time. I made extensive use of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint in graduate school and in various professional settings through Office 2001. Now I mostly use Excel to do basic financial analysis and Word to write personal documents.


Installation:
*Installation is straightforward, using Apple's familiar Installer mechanism. I prefer this method to the old drag-and-drop installation method because OS X is so sensitive to where things are installed.

*The installer program automatically finds older versions of Office and allows users to delete them easily.

*Many customized settings can be transferred from previous Office installations, including dictionaries, autocorrect lists, and proofing tool settings.

*Once Office 2008 is installed, several updates must be downloaded and installed. Microsoft should have made this process more user-friendly. Users must manually shut down other applications, including the Office 2008 Installer, before running the update installer.


Pros:
*Office is now a Universal Binary so the same program will run on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

*An Uninstaller is placed in the Office folder automatically.

*Office will check for updates automatically on a schedule chosen by the user. No more messing around on the Microsoft website, hoping you didn't miss a Service Pack or Critical Update.

*Users can now turn the feedback sounds on and off. If hearing a chime, a popping bubble, or some other "cute" noise every time you did something drove you crazy, you will greatly appreciate this long overdue feature.

*Speaking of unnecessary cuteness, Clippy the Paperclip is gone! Yesssssss!


Cons:
*All the applications startup and quit slowly on my G4 machine. Office v.X applications started and quit virtually instantaneously (yes, I realize v.X was written specifically for PowerPC processors). Saving files is slow as well.

*Office 2008 uses a new file format that is not compatible with other versions of Office. If you send documents to people who are not fully up to date, you have to save a second version or limit yourself to working with the older file format.

*It's good that Microsoft no longer just ports Windows Office to the Mac. Nonetheless, there are user interface inconsistencies both within and across the applications which keep Office from feeling 100% Macintosh.

*Silverlight, Microsoft's attempt to compete with Macromedia Flash, is installed by default.

*No macros in Excel! Bad, bad, bad move. And no support for Visual Basic.


Expression Media comments:
*EM is a standalone application, not a fully integrated component of Office. Installation and activation is a separate process from installing Office and requires entering a second product key.

*Mac Office ships with EM 1.0 . Users must manually download EM 2.0 from the Microsoft website after installing the earlier version. This is inconvenient but not a gigantic obstacle if you have a fast Internet connection.

*EM is a good tool for managing projects that use data from many sources. For example, somebody putting together a presentation that includes text from Word, numbers from Excel, slides from PowerPoint, music from MP3's, and images from digital photographs can organize all the necessary files in one EM "catalog." All the source material for the presentation is then viewable in one place.

*EM doesn't create new copies of documents, thankfully, but its catalogs can become very large. As a test, I created two catalogs with digital photographs--a 3.5 GB set resulted in a 25.8 MB catalog and a 1.5GB set created a 113.9 MB catalog. I'm not sure what accounts for this very large discrepancy but it's clear that EM isn't for people with limited hard disk space.

*Home users probably will find EM to be overkill for their needs. If you just want to keep track of your music and photos, iPhoto and iTunes are more than adequate. Having said that, I'm going to use EM to manage all the e-delivery documents I receive from banks, brokers, and the like. It will be a lot easier than digging through lots of Finder folders and subdirectories.

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Bottom line: Office 2008 doesn't hold any surprises for experienced Office users. For the most part, everything still operates in the way to which you are accustomed. If you own a PowerPC Mac and use an older version of Office, you should carefully consider whether you want to upgrade or not. The benefits of the new features may be outweighed by the inconvenience of the slower performance and/or the need to adjust your workflow.

3.5 stars, rounded up to 4 because Expression Media is a useful tool.

Powerful but slow
I updated to Microsoft Office 2008 from M.O. 2004 because I purchased a new, Intel-based, Leopard-running, 2.6 GHz MacBook Pro and thought M.O. 2008 would be faster than what I had. The software has all the features of the 2004 version plus a few features I'll probably not use but I was disappointed by the amount of time it takes for the various programs to load. For instance, from the time I click on the Word icon in the dock until a blank document opens takes about 13 seconds. Word 2004 on my 1 Ghz Titanium G4 PowerBook only took about 5 seconds.

Other than that, I like the fact that the applications work very much like the previous versions so there is very little required learning curve.